I Swear, I'm Not A Bad Friend.

Man, three posts? I must have a lot to say. Or, perhaps I just think I do. No way I'll be able to keep this up. Oh well.

When you have a friend, that means a lot of things about the relationship the two of you share. Presumably, it is mutually beneficial, in the sense that you both gain something from having it. If it were not so, and you didn't gain anything from having the friendship, it stands to reason that you wouldn't have that friendship, if only because you would not be compelled to maintain it and it would fall into disrepair.
But, one byproduct of this friend relationship is that you are compelled to "want the best" for your friend. We're not going to delve too deeply into what it means to want the best for someone; suffice it to say that you want them to be happy, whatever that means specifically. You want them to be happy with the way things are going in their life.
I do not disagree with this, of course. I think this is common, natural, and appropriate. However, something interesting has come to my attention lately: I've been growing increasingly aware of an aspect of my friends' lives wherein I am annoyed when they do well.
It's dating.
I'm admitting to being a bit annoyed when my friends are doing well with the ladies.
Now, let me address what is undoubtedly you judging me as a bad friend. I am not entirely annoyed by this success; I truly am happy that my friend is happy. Or, rather, I am happy for him. I'm not annoyed by this because he's getting something that I want and am not receiving (although that's certainly the case). Let me explain.
When I moved out here to Utah, I gained a certain group of friends within the first few months. Eventually, my group of friends consisted of: A, B, Ar, S, and J. Of course I had other friends, but these were the closest guy friends that I had. Not terriby long ago, A got married. That was a wonderful thing for him, of course, and I'll admit that I was a little bummed that I wouldn't be seeing him as often, but it was alright. I had other friends to fall back on (actually, at the time, I had what I thought was promising ladying going on, which softened the issue).
Recently, though, things have gotten more difficult. B just got engaged. Ar and S are in committed relationships (to various degrees of committment, and with their own unique intricacies), and J looks like he's stepping into one as well.
If I am a good friend, I want the best for my friends, right? Presumably, in the realm of dating, this means that I want their relationships to be successful. But if their relationships are successful, then our friendships are going to pay a price for that. Perhaps that doesn't mean that I will lose the friendships, but, in most of these cases, it does likely mean that I will rarely, if ever, see my friends. Ours will be restricted to facebook friendships, where occasionally we'll see eachother at a show or on campus, but no more. They just won't have time.
Now, let me be clear: I'm not saying that these friends of mine owe it to me to fail in these relationships. That's obviously absurd. I'm not saying that, when a friend gets married, I'm being wronged. Not at all. It's what they should be doing. I am saying, however, that when a friend gets married, I have an undeniable, and (I think) natural reaction that something bad is happeneing to me, and that the triggering event is regrettable.
I am now put in the unenviable position of hoping, somewhere deep inside me, for the failure of my friends' relationships. I am, understandably, ashamed of this feeling, but it remains nonetheless.
So, what do I do about this? Do I request that my friend stop dating people until I'm in a serious committed relationship, and THEN he's allowed to go out and do the same? Of course not. Do I intentionally sabotage his relationships so that I no longer have this problem? Absolutely not. There is no possible outcome of that situation that is good for anyone.
So, what do I do, then? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be that I continue to try to find my own happiness (in this example, a serious committed relationship). That basically means that I keep doing what I'm doing. It likely also means that I ought to step up my game on that, but no major course changes are necessary.
Then, it must seem like I've spent all this time talking about a shameful problem that I'm dealing with, only to come to the conclusion that no real change must be made. What point was there in talking about this at all, then? What purpose was served?
It's a purpose that I come back to time and time again, because, apparently, I think it's important. Self-Knowledge. I think it's important to know yourself. This is an issue (among many others) that has been weighing heavily on my mind the past little while, and it's one that I've never heard addressed before, so I wanted to tackle it.
That's what's happening in my mind.
That's why I think it's happening.
That's... really the point of this whole thing.

I've Been Ramming My Head Into This Same Wall For Weeks Now

Wow. Two posts in as many days? Kind of a rare occurence for me.

Before I go into what I'm about to talk about, I want to warn you ["you" being the incredibly unlikely reader of this blog]; if you are the kind of person that is not interested in whiny posts laden with 'woe is me' type of talk, then keep on walking. Some days I write about music, or painting, or faith, or decisions, or whatever. Today I'm going to write about how I've had a tough time lately. Catharsis and all that.

So... it's been kind of a tough week. I had a date on Monday. Yeah, I know, it's not often that a "oh my life is so difficult" type thought is paired with "I had a date." But asi es la vida.

It was a date with a girl that I had been wanting to go out with for a while. We went to see a play, and had dinner and all that, and it was actually a pretty good date, I thought. I had a really good time, and she seemed to have a good time also. I would have no reason to think it wasn't a good date, except for the end, when we stood out in front of her door. I had intended to say something along the lines of "Hey, I had a good time, we should do this again." Hopefully more charming than that, but whatever. But when I would have said it, something held me back. It just didn't feel right to say that.
Frustration! The whole date went much better than I even really thought it would, and now, when I'm supposed to petition for the continuation of dates, I have some stupor of thought, as it were. And what now? How can I find out how she felt about the date? I can't, as far as I'm aware. I don't have an "in" to her apartment in the way of a good friend who is her roommate, and she and I really don't hang out in the same circle of friends much. So... what to do.
"Well, you moron," the hypothetical reader might say to me, if he were a bit rude, "you could just ask her out again. If she says yes, she obviously had an okay time."
"Yes, inconsiderate reader," I might say, "you're right. That's an option. Hopefully I'll work up the gumption to do that."

See... something else has been on my mind lately, too. A while back I was going out with this girl (it should be made clear that, according to certain details that I cannot, for the sake of decency and others' privacy, divulge, she might object to the term "going out," if she were reading this. I only use the term loosely, and because I don't have a better word for whatever it was), and it seemed to be going really well to me. Because of some comments she made (which either I misinterpreted or she later changed her mind against), I thought we were basically dating. Long story short (because Heaven knows she doesn't care to hear the long version [and Heaven only knows why]), I tried to talk to her about it. About a day and a half later, she said she didn't want to go out with me at all anymore.
I went through what is, for me, a pretty standard cycle of grief. I was confused, hurt, self-conscious, and really wanted to change the situation despite the fact that, as far as I could see, there was no changing to be done. After about a week or so (and after one blog post post I retracted and a couple of songs written about it), I was feeling alright about it. I mean, I was still pretty bummed, but I was getting over it.
Since then... well, it's been up and down. Sometimes for a week or so I'm doing just fine. Sometimes great. But there are days when I... I just miss her. We went really well together, I thought. She seemed to agree, right up till the end. I miss being able to talk to her whenever I wanted, and I miss visiting her at her apartment and talking about all kinds of things. I miss going out on dates with her and feeling like we both wanted to be there.
There's a lot more to this story, by the way. My side of the story is very long, and confused, and self-conscious, although I think that, given the circumstances, what I did was perfectly understandable and reasonable. I don't know how she feels about the situtaion because she won't talk to me anymore. Not much I can do about that, it seems like.
Another thing to clarify: I don't have any hard feelings toward her. I imagine she must have had good reasons for what she did and what she is doing/not doing. I just don't know what those reasons are, and that's frustrating. I still think she's a wonderful person. That's part of why this sucks so much; I still think she's great, but now I can't be around her anymore.
Some days, it's just hard. It's hard to want and to be so unwanted (or, at least, to feel as such). Not really sure what to do about it, honestly. But, I'll either figure it out or I won't, and that's pretty much that.
Anyway, I needed to write about that. It's not better now, and I don't even feel particularly better about it. But... I don't know. I guess writing about it can't hurt, at this point, right?
Thanks for reading, hypothetical reader. And thanks for not calling me a moron again. I would probably be offended if I weren't the one writing your lines.